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STINGRAY PICNIC


Stingrays are found around the world, but you'll never see them any better than at Staniel Cay in the Bahamas.  Stingrays are winged wonders of Water World.  Their diamond-shaped bodies are perfectly adapted to the shallow waters where they silently cruise just above the seabed. 

This stingray is flying through water that is less than three feet deep.  His buddy, the needle-nose fish, looks down from above as the stingray gracefully glides along the bottom.  Most of the time when we see stingrays, they are resting on the seabed.  As you walk through shallow water or snorkel by, they move off a few meters to a new location before they put down their landing gear and go into resting mode once again.



Staniel Key was the first time I saw groups of stingrays cruising together in the same area.  I never thought of stingrays as social creatures who travel in schools; solitary stingrays have always been the rule.  A week after I took these pictures, I saw a school of five spotted stingrays  swimming in the shallow waters off Lyford Key.  Maybe schooling is more common than I thought.

The reason all of these rays have congregated in this location is because they are coming to a stingray picnic with the food provided courtesy of the anglers of Staniel Key.



At the end of a day of sportfishing, the anglers bring their catches to Staniel Cay where they clean them.  Several hours later, the carcasses of mahi mahi and grouper litter the shallow water of the bay.  Stingrays cruise over to the scraps and have their free picnic.  Watching the stingrays devour scraps of fish came as a big surprise, because we didn't know that stingrays were carnivores.  As you can see in this picture, the rays are happily munching away on remnants of mahi mahi.

Stingrays are beautiful, non-aggressive toward humans, and they have a simple defense mechanism - the barbed stinger in their tail.  That type of packaging seems to be the recipe for an unmolested lifestyle.  It's an aquatic version of "walk silently, but carry a big stick."

You don't see fat stingrays or obese eels; they are programmed to consume what they need to survive and nothing more.  Animals live in a consumer-based world in which over-consumption isn't a problem.  Something went awry with the human species.  We are one of the few species afflicted by over- consumption.  If we behaved more like animals, we would probably be healthier, happier, and live longer.

The cruising lifestyle  tends to make you lean and mean.  You slim down and shed excess pounds.  Like the stingrays, over-consumption isn't a part of your life, and you feel better because of it. 

Life is good.

 


Log 1 Peter Pan Around the World
Log 2 Weapons of Mackerel Destruction
Log 3 Pirates of the Malacca Straits
Log 4 Kissing Cobras
Log 5 Debriosaurus Rex
Log 6 Go Ahead - Live Your Dreams

Log 7 The Man Who Built His House on a Rock
Log 8 Ambivalent Eagles
Log 9 One-Shovel Full at a Time
Log 10 Hitchhiker's Guide to Planet Earth

Log 11 Keeshond

Log 12 The Red Sea Blues

Log 13 Feel the Freedom

Log 14 The Danger Zone

Log 15 Lucky Man
Log 16 Dream Machines - Land Rover Defenders

Log 17 Trade Wind Dreams
Log 18 Logs With Fins
Log 19 Everywhere, Everything
Log 20 Shark Slayer Is History

Log 21 Viking Funeral - Burial at Sea
Log 22 Improbable and Impossible

Log 23 Keep on Trucking
Log 24 Dream Machines II
Log 25 Bodysurfing Whales
Log 26 Hitting the Wall
Log 27 Surviving the Savage Seas

Log 28 The Next Step
Log 29 Welcome to Barbados
Log 30 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers
Log 31 The Man with the Unplan
Log 32 Dali Dolphins
Log 33 Flying Like a Turtle
Log 34 The Foolish Man Built His House on a Pitch Lake
Log 35 Go West Young Man
Log 36 Crossing the Atlantic in a Row Boat
Log 37 The Unsinkable HMS Diamond Rock
Log 38 Catamaran Capsize in 170 mph Winds
Log 39 When Are You Coming Home?

Log 40 Master and Commander of Anegada - Frigate Birds
Log 41 Baths of Virgin Gorda - Batholiths of Central Arabia

Log 42 Free at Last
Log 43 Stalking the Wild Manatee

Log 44 Spreaderman
Log 45 Attack of the Flesh Eating Bees
Log 46 Sharks and Coconuts
Log 47 Stingray Picnic
Log 48 Boo Boo Hill
Log 49 Whale Slayers
Log 50 Noddies (Not Naughty)

 

Log 51 Exumas Land and Sea Park
Log 52 David and Goliath
Log 53 Turquoise Clouds of Paradise

Log 54 Momma Nightjar
Log 55 Maximillian The Great
Log 56 Chiton Kingdom
Log 57 Flying and Holding On
Log 58 Far Horizons
Log 59 Clouds Are a Sailor's Friend
Log 60 Getting Connected
Log 61 Fear
Log 62 Grand Schemes and Other Important Things
Log 63 If Jellyfish Had a Brain
Log 64 Cousins That Don't Kiss
Log 65 Swimming With Sharks
Log 66 Perfect the Way You Are
Log 67 Space Travelers
Log 68 Aliens
Log 69 Monsters of the Mind
Log 70 My Butterfly Collection
Log 71 Somewhere Other Than Here Societies
Log 72 Five-Hundred Pound Spiders
Log 73 Red Sea Sunsets
Log 74 Gibraltar Sunrise
Log 75 Big Sea - Small Ship
Log 76 Just Cruising
Log 77 Castle Mania
Log 78 You Must Know the Sea
Log 79 Flying Like a Goat
Log 80 The Joy of Photography
Log 81 Universal Camouflage
Log 82 My Rainbow Collection
Log 83 Indian Ocean Reward
Log 84 Fiber W
Log 85 Turkish Reflections
Log 86 Mirrors and Mirages
Log 87 Lycean Tombs Rock
Log 88 Rigging Emergency
Log 89 Pamukkale
Log 90 Volcano Land
Log 91 Sniffing the Air
Log 92 Why I Don't Kite Surf
Log 93 Resurrecting Exit Only in Turkey
Log 94 Greased Pole Competition
Log 95 Tsunami Damage
Log 96 Afraid of Living
Log 97 Living on the Edge
Log 98 Borneo Adventure
Log 99 Uligamu Tree Tender with Full Benefits
Log 100 God's Fireworks Display

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This web site is a companion to Outback and Beyond.com.

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